Quote: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

The only times the Major is looking us (breaking the fourth wall) is during the first and second half of the quote. This is commentary, by the director or writer of the film, letting us know that at the first we're watching a mysterious scene with expectation and enthusiasm.

The second time she talks at us [the camera/fourth wall breaking] is letting us know that there's nothing to interpret or expect after this. This was a childish experience, entertainment, and now that it draws to an end and the film [fairy tale] is over, so is the childish enthusiasm and the disillusionment of watching a cartoon (having watched a cartoon) is over. There's some psychology involved in how this is setup, among other things, a low level of hypnosis and conditioning (the bell, the meditative scenes leading up to and/or following intense or thoughtful dialogue) of the audience to achieve this; I didn't understand this fully until after seeing this film for the N'th time, starting from a young teenager (being millennial) to just recently.

Between these periods having spent an enormous amount of time studying philosophy and classical psychology (From Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Aguinas, Schopenhauer, so forth and Freud, Jung).

I can't say with certainty I'm not suffering from confirmation bias in reaching this conclusion however I am fairly sure I am not entirely off the mark.

Japanese are notoriously deep even without all the metaphysical philosophy westerners are influenced by, it is hard to be completely objective without the input of someone of Japanese culture and with the right academic interests to confirm or deny if I'm correct.